The Clone Apocalypse (18 page)

TWENTY-SIX

Date: August 24, 2519

I wasn’t there when MacAvoy died, but I saw the security feed and filled in the holes with my imagination.

The Unified Authority had an army, but not a large one. Thirty thousand U.A. soldiers landed at Carmack Gateway Spaceport, the very spaceport from which I had stolen the Meadowlark. Most of the soldiers remained in the spaceport, but two thousand men boarded armored personnel carriers and crossed the Potomac on the Curtis Memorial Bridge.

They met no resistance. By this time, the clone virus had run its course. We’d died in our barracks and bases, like so many termites, fumigated in their hives.

The convoy didn’t include a single tank or Jackal, just personnel carriers, jeeps, and men armed with M27s. The convoy wound its way east, passing old monuments of ancient presidents. They passed the Lincoln and Jefferson temples, and the George Washington spike. Then came the war memorials, ancient and modern alike. There’d be new memorials soon enough, one celebrating the sacrifices of natural-borns and their valiant fight against the evil clones.

The convoy turned north on 17th Street. What thoughts entered those soldiers’ heads as they passed the ruins of the Pentagon and the National Archive Building, landmarks that their ships had destroyed? Did they blame us? When we invaded, we captured the capital without destroying a single building.

Traffic was light on that day, and the convoy reached the Linear Committee Building just before noon.

The twenty personnel carriers and ten jeeps formed a loose ring around the perimeter. Once the area was secure, three government-issue limousines pulled into the parking lot.

That was when Perry MacAvoy shot off the first of his shoulder-fired rockets.

You have to hand it to MacAvoy; he sent the “Unies” a message just as he promised. Instead of using a handheld rocket-propelled grenade, which would have weighed about three pounds and fired from a foot-long baton, he used a Flaws Rocket, an obsolete weapon used for shooting down gunships. You could destroy a low-gravity tank with a Flaws Rocket; it was also powerful enough to disintegrate a small iceberg. The damn things fired from a five-foot bazooka that weighed twenty-three pounds.

How MacAvoy requisitioned that antique I never found out. I know how he transported it. He no longer had the strength to stand. He’d commandeered one of Howard Tasman’s motorized wheelchairs and turned it into a tank by strapping rocket launchers to the armrests. Once he knew Andropov was coming, he drove to a third-floor window that faced the main entrance, and there he had sat and waited for the limousines to arrive.

He was weak; he was dying. He had an oxygen bottle attached to the back of his wheelchair as well. He sipped flu fighter from a mop bucket.

Knowing that protection protocol called for bodyguard personnel to ride in the lead car and the car in the rear, MacAvoy hit the limo in the middle, then, on the off chance that there had been a fourth car as well, he fired a rocket at the third limousine.

By sheer coincidence, Tobias Andropov was riding in the first car, the one MacAvoy skipped. Having thought that the war was over, he’d absentmindedly stepped into the lead car. It was the junior members of the newly formed Linear Committee who died in cars two and three. Sitting in the first car, Andropov escaped the ambush without a scratch.

Fifteen hundred Unified Authority soldiers stormed the LCB. They ran through the lobby, which was empty, not a clone to be seen. Some soldiers took the stairs; the officers rode the elevators.

They searched the first floor and found hundreds of corpses. Realizing his men would die wherever they went, MacAvoy had summoned his senior staff to the building. Those who had strength enough went there to die, the rest died in infirmaries and barracks. Every soldier died; everyone but MacAvoy.

There must have been magic in that flu-fighter drink. It protected him from the flu, but it didn’t make him bulletproof.

The soldiers made their way to the third floor of the LCB. Here they found boxes of bullets and cases of grenades. This was the floor on which Perry made his last stand. It was one very unhealthy clone against fifteen hundred soldiers, but he scared them more than they scared him.

Now that he’d fired both rockets, MacAvoy abandoned the window. He drove his wheelchair out of the office and into the hall. He must have hated riding in that wheelchair. It drove at barely better than three miles per hour. MacAvoy, a man with more adrenaline than patience, kept hitting the accelerator and swearing at the top of his lungs.

He rode the wheelchair down the hall to a spot where he could see all four elevators. The warning bell dinged, a light flashed above the first elevator, and MacAvoy fired a rocket-propelled grenade into the doors as they slid open. The grenade hit and exploded, blowing the various pieces of the elevator into a dozen different directions.

The next door opened. MacAvoy fired an RPG into that one as well. When the third elevator opened, he struck again. The fourth elevator door never opened. Battered by debris from the other elevators, the cable holding the last car snapped.

Despite his cussed nature and the oranges and peppers in his drink, Pernell MacAvoy was nine-tenths dead by this time, but that last tenth, the one that came with a death reflex hadn’t yet died. Destroying three elevators filled with officers had returned some of the color to his cheeks, but the man had no strength. Had he been able to stand on his own, he would have rigged the stairwell with explosives. His spirit was willing, but his flesh was cooked, and the best he could do was to connect a single mine to the door. A Unified Authority soldier opened that door, and the mine exploded. The force from that blast sent the door shooting through the air, decapitating the five closest men. The percussion deafened a few hundred more.

The only weapon MacAvoy had left was an M27. He was alone and weak and nearly dead. He pulled out his gun and curled into a coughing fit. He was still coughing when a couple of U.A. commandos finally captured him. Had he not been coughing, he might have shot himself.

A soldier ran up behind him and kicked the wheelchair out from beneath him, spilling him onto the floor. Another man grabbed his M27. A third rolled the dying man onto his stomach and handcuffed his hands behind his back.

Now that they’d caught the dying old clone and taken his weapon, the Unified Authority soldiers became downright brazen. They rolled him on his back, and one soldier kicked his gut. His broken cigar still in his mouth, MacAvoy coughed up blood, then gave the man a cherubic smile.

Security-system cameras captured the moment from several angles, but they didn’t record the sounds. Any words spoken were lost. In my mind, I imagined MacAvoy laughing hysterically as he fired his weapons, probably still laughing even after taking that boot to the ribs.

The Unifieds kept a lid on MacAvoy while they secured the building. He was still on the floor, lying in a puddle of flu fighter and blood, when Tobias Andropov stepped out of the stairwell. The two of them had a short conversation, then Andropov’s soldiers lifted MacAvoy up to his feet.

He tried to stand, but he had no strength in his legs, so they placed him back in his wheelchair. They pushed the chair beside a wall.

He’d been a clone. As far as they were concerned, that made him less than human. The Unified Authority didn’t hold war trials for tanks or jeeps or clones. Only humans had a right to a fair trial, and synthetic humans didn’t fit the minimum qualifications.

Lieutenant General Pernell MacAvoy stared into the firing squad as the men aimed the weapons. His smile faded, but he never blinked. The soldiers fired their weapons, and he toppled out of the wheelchair. His jaw must have clenched during that final moment; the cigar remained in place long after his death.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Despite the battle, the holes in the parking lot and the destruction of the elevators, MacAvoy apparently left the Linear Committee Building fit for occupancy. The only thing anyone told me about MacAvoy’s last stand during my flight to the capital was that he died sitting on his ass. The way they told the story, I imagined him shitting in a latrine with a cigar in his mouth.

I managed to hold on to Pugh’s gift. After Conlon dropped it in my lap, I’d spread my thighs wide enough to pinch my legs around it.

It wouldn’t have mattered if the thermal pack held a grenade, a bomb, or a gun, I wouldn’t have been able to use it during the flight; my guard detail never released my hands. It would have been such poetic justice if the pack had held a grenade, and I had been able to pull the pin—a midair explosion, me taking fifty Unified Authority soldiers and a pilot with me.

Later, after watching the feed of Perry MacAvoy’s meteoric swan song, I decided that destroying a mere transport would have paled in comparison.

No one spoke to me as we flew north and east. I sat alone in the dark, my hands cuffed to the armrests, my legs, and chest and neck all strapped in place. The slip around my neck forced me to sit unnaturally straight, causing a crick in my back and neck that damn near drove me crazy. Then there was the needle in my arm. I didn’t know what drugs and solutions Pugh’s doctors had dripping into my arms, but they ran out halfway to Washington and my aches and pains took on new definition.

I sat there with that empty needle jabbed in my arm, unable to scratch the myriad of psychosomatic itches that formed on my face and neck and back. In truth, I felt lower than I could ever remember. I was sick, but those specking straps kept me sitting at attention for the full three hours.

Transports have a maximum atmospheric speed of two thousand miles per hour. That old Meadowlark I’d stolen flew so slowly that I expected her to drop out of the sky. Flying to Mazatlan in the Meadowlark had taken ten hours, but I had slept through most of it.

I sat facing the ramp and the shadows, so thirsty I thought my throat might tear every time I swallowed. We reached Carmack Gateway and the transport lowered onto a runway. My short flight from Unified Authority justice ended on the same runway that it began, but I had returned weaker and strapped to a wheelchair.

More than anything else, I wanted to drink the gel out of my thermal pack and end everything. Had there been a grenade, I’d gladly have pulled the pin. There’d been a time when my Liberator programming wouldn’t allow me to commit suicide, but Sunny had erased that part of my programming during her experiments. Now I would not only have the ability to pull the pin, I genuinely longed for the opportunity.

The MacAvoy of my delirium was right about me. Placed in my position, any respectable Marine would have dreamed about wreaking a little ungodly revenge. Me, I just wanted to die. If I remembered correctly, he had called me “pathetic.” Good call.

The doors at the rear of the kettle slowly ground open, revealing Carmack Gateway Spaceport, an open runway, terminals lined by planes, and a vast sea of spectators. It was almost like the long-awaited return of a messianic figure. Hundreds of men in military uniforms surrounded a meter-high dais. Behind them stood a swarm of suit-wearing politicians, both men and women. I also spotted reporters, hundreds of them, pushing to get to the front of the crowd. Mostly, I saw civilians, the natural-born citizens of the Unified Authority, all come to see the galaxy’s most notorious terrorist delivered to justice. I was the man of the hour.

Freeman must know about this,
I thought. He was the deadliest sniper I’d ever seen. Maybe he would spare me some humiliation. Maybe he’d pick me off as they rolled me down the ramp. He could do it. I’d watched him hit targets from multiple miles away. He had that skill.

The first man to meet me as I came down the ramp was Tobias Andropov, in the flesh. He took three steps forward to greet me, fixing me with a wolf’s smile, and said, “The synthetic Spartacus returns without his troops.”

The history of Rome. I knew a little something about the history of Rome. I said, “I’d watch your back, Caesar. Of Rome’s 150 emperors, only 25 died of natural causes.”

He gave me the slightest bow, and said, “Thanks for the warning, Harris, but you will die long before I do.”

There was no arguing that point.

Forget the transport filled with peon soldiers, just the sight of Andropov filled me with rage. Something strange . . . with my arms and legs strapped into place and a cord around my neck, my back wrenched straight, and the sun in my eyes, I felt a little healthier than I had in the transport. I didn’t feel like dancing or running a marathon, but my brain focused, and my lungs took in more air. The man who had defeated me stood jubilant before me, thousands of people had come hoping to see my execution, and I smiled faintly and relaxed.

Andropov had turned my return into a photo op. He stood heroically at the forefront, overseeing my arrival the way a warden would observe the delivery of a famous criminal. He posed in front of my wheelchair, pointing at me, challenging me, shouting at me.

He said, “Harris, you have been charged with heinous war crimes,” but what he meant was, “Lazarus, come forth.” I was as good as dead. Had he left me in Mazatlan, I might not have survived. Whatever medicines Pugh’s physician had given me, they didn’t strengthen me as much as the hormone now surging through my veins.

People yelled at me. They screamed that they wanted me dead. Some pumped their fists in the air. Some had signs that said things like
HANG THE BASTARD!
and
DEATH TODAY!

Andropov, the conquering hero, climbed onto a large dais on which sat a podium. He pointed at me, and said, “General Harris says you all owe him a debt of gratitude.”

I hadn’t said that. I had never said that, never in my life as far as I could remember. That was a specking lie.

Photographers videoed Andropov as he continued. “Having defeated the clones in battle, we have captured their king. In time, we will heal from the wounds he and his kind have inflicted upon us. In time, we will reestablish our galactic empire, we will renew our pangalactic growth and reclaim our place in the stars, but we will never again place our security in the hands of a synthetic horde.”

The crowd erupted. The commoners cheered, the reporters applauded, the soldiers hooted and hollered, and the politicians were downright orgasmic. The common crowd wouldn’t have known any better, but the soldiers and politicians had to know that this was all bullshit. The Unifieds hadn’t beaten us on the battlefield; they’d beaten us in the laboratory. Their flu virus won the war, not their soldiers.

Andropov could have gone on, but anything he said at this point would have been anticlimactic. The quintessential politician, he knew all about the diminishing returns of bluster. Instead of speaking, he lowered his head as if in prayer, and he silently stepped down from the dais.

The tumult that followed . . .

His head still bowed, Andropov looked at me and smiled broadly, then he walked over to Major Conlon and said something, but the deafening noise drowned him out. Conlon shouted, “WHAT?”

Andropov screamed, “GET HIM OUT OF HERE! GET HIM TO THE FACILITY! MAKE SURE NOTHING HAPPENS TO HIM! LOOK AT THEM; I NEED THE CLONE ALIVE!”

The newly returned senior member of the Linear Committee’s concern for my well-being wasn’t charity; he genuinely needed me. A lot of people had died during the last decade. We’d lost 179 colonies, and our economy had gone to shit. Andropov wanted a scapegoat—an evil genius whom he could blame for everything. He needed a poster boy. You can’t haul dead clones into court. As long as I was alive and on trial, Andropov could point at me and blame me for everything. If I died, I’d be a faceless statistic, and blaming the fall of the Unified Authority on a statistic would be a tough sell.

He gazed back at me one last time, and I saw no emotion in his face. He didn’t hate me, didn’t pity me, and didn’t fear me. I was just another vanquished enemy to him, just another head to mount on his wall. My hide would not be the centerpiece in his trophy case.

Andropov was young by world-conqueror standards, forty-six years old. He’d spent more than a year in prison, a guest of the Enlisted Man’s Empire. Maybe he planned to let me languish for a year as part of my restitution, but sooner or later I would face a circus-act trial, and my execution would follow.

Seeing that the crowd had become something of a mob, and that that mob wouldn’t behave much longer, Conlon acted quickly. He closed his men around me, and they rushed me into an armored personnel carrier. The driver wasted no time. He took us out of Carmack Gateway, taking a runway access road. As we left the spaceport complex, a line of jeeps and tanks fell in behind us.

The personnel carrier didn’t have much in the way of windows, just two face-sized bulletproof glass panels on the rear doors. Sitting with a dozen guards around me, I watched the mob shrinking into the distance.

The mob—politicians whom the Enlisted Man’s Empire had indulged and left in power in a bid to gain support, a citizenry we had tried too hard to placate. Yes, we had returned to Earth as conquerors; we had defeated their government, but only after they had abandoned us in space.

Conlon, who was so short that he didn’t need to duck his head to stand in the back of the personnel carrier, stood beside my chair. He said, “Quite a fan club you have, Harris. If we left you with those people, they would have pulled you apart.”

I didn’t respond. I had nothing to say.